This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

End Israeli occupation of all Palestinian lands: Siddiqui

How do you break the Hamas pathology of attacking Israel and killing or kidnapping Israeli soldiers and the Israeli pathology of killing so many civilians?

Relatives of Palestinian Tamer Sammour, 22, mourn during his funeral in the West Bank Aug. 1, 2014. Sammour was shot and killed during clashes with Israeli troops following a protest against the war in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said. (Mohammed Ballas / AP)

With the Gaza crisis in its fourth week, here are some things to ponder.

While the world was desperately calling for a ceasefire to end the daily horror, Stephen Harper never once wavered in supporting the Israeli onslaught.

Even when the United States condemned the Israeli shelling of a UN school with 3,000 Palestinians sheltered there, Harper showed no compassion. “We hold the terrorist organization Hamas responsible for this. They have initiated and continue this conflict and continue to seek the destruction of Israel.”

Hamas talks of destroying Israel and killing Jews but it is Israel that has destroyed Gaza (for the second time in six years) and killed some 1,500 Palestinians and injured 8,400, most of them civilians (a higher toll than in the 2008-09 war on Gaza).

Harper said that if a terrorist organization were to attack Canada, it would face a similar response from us.

Article Continued Below

But Canada is not an occupier, as Israel has been of Palestinian lands, parts of which it has been confiscating for illegal Jewish settlements. Canada is not subjecting a people to cruel and inhumane punishment, as Israel has been for 47 years.

Harper is echoing Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said: “We are not targeting a single civilian.” (They just find their way into the path of missiles and bombs and shells.)

Netanyahu accuses Hamas of wanting to “pile up as many civilian dead as they can,” to “use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”

His ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, has said that the Israeli army deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for “fighting with unimaginable restraint” in Gaza. “Israeli soldiers are dying so that innocent Palestinians can live.”

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have also lined up behind Netanyahu. A delegation of six Canadian MPs to Israel last week, on a trip organized and paid for by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, included two Liberal MPs, John McCallum of Markham-Unionville and Carolyn Bennett of St. Paul’s.

They visited Sderot, a target of Hamas rockets, toured hospitals, attended a Canada-Israel Solidarity rally in Jerusalem and visited Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. In this round of the Arab-Israeli war, though, it is not the PA that constitutes the other side but rather Gaza and Gazans.

If Harper has been forthright in supporting Netanyahu, Barack Obama has been hypocritical in dealing with the Israeli prime minister.

On the same day that Washington expressed outrage over the school bombing, the Pentagon authorized the immediate transfer of American grenades and mortar rounds to Israel.

That was in addition to a July 15 shipment of 4.3 tons of American rocket motors and earlier deliveries of rocket launchers, guided missiles and artillery, according to Amnesty International, which has 80,000 members in Canada.

The U.S. has also approved another $225 million for Israel’s Iron Dome system against Hamas rockets. That prompted UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to note that “no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.”

Amnesty International has called on the UN to impose an arms embargo on all parties, including Hamas which has been supplied by Iran.

The group also wants the International Criminal Court to probe if any war crimes have been committed. Israel is not a party to the court, so the UN Security Council would have to authorize the inquiry. But the U.S. would veto such a proposal.

“We know it’s an uphill battle,” says Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty’s Canadian branch. But without any mechanism for accountability, both Israel and Hamas would continue to enjoy immunity from possible war crimes. These include: Palestinian groups firing rockets into Israel, endangering civilians; placing rockets in heavily populated areas and firing from there; Israel attacking military targets in densely populated areas; Israel appearing to consider the homes of people associated with Hamas to be legitimate military targets; and Israel claiming to be warning civilians but showing “a consistent pattern” that does “not constitute an ‘effective warning’ under international humanitarian law.”

How to break the Hamas pathology of attacking Israel, killing or kidnapping Israeli soldiers, and the Israeli pathology of killing so many civilians and wreaking horrifying levels of physical destruction?

End the occupation, says Rabbi Henry Siegman. He is the former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, former head of the Synagogue Council of America, former senior fellow of the Council on Foreign relations and now president of the U.S./Middle East Project.

“When one thinks that this is what’s necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we’re watching these days on television, that’s really a profound, profound crisis . . .

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com